the_planet_earthfandomcom-20200214-history
USA
The United States of America (commonly called the United States, the U.S., the USA, America, and the States) is a federalconstitutional republic consisting of fifty states and a federal district. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its forty-eight contiguous states and Washington, D.C., the capital district, lie between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans,bordered by Canada to the north and Mexico to the south. The state of Alaska is in the northwest of the continent, with Canada to the east and Russia to the west across the Bering Strait. The state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific. The country also possesses several territories in the Pacific and Caribbean. At 3.79 million square miles (9.83 million km2) and with over 314 million people, the United States is the third- or fourth-largest country by total area, and the third-largest by both land area andpopulation. It is one of the world's most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, the product of large-scale immigration from many countries.[6] Paleoindians migrated from Asia to what is now the United States mainland around 15,000 years ago. The Native Americanpopulation descendent from them was in turn greatly reduced, primarily by disease after European contact and exacerbated byEuropean colonization. The United States itself was initially derived from thirteen British colonies located along the Atlantic seaboard. On July 4, 1776, delegates to the Continental Congress issued the Declaration of Independence, which proclaimed their right to self-determination and establishment of a sovereign union. The rebellious states defeated the British Empire in theAmerican Revolution, the first successful colonial war of independence.[7] The current United States Constitution was adopted on September 17, 1787; its ratification the following year made the states part of a single republic with a stronger central government. The Bill of Rights, consisting of ten constitutional amendments guaranteeing many fundamental civil rights and freedoms, was ratified in 1791. Through the 19th century, the United States embarked on a vigorous program of expansion across North America. It displaced native tribes, acquiring the Louisiana territory from France and Florida from Spain. It annexed the Republic of Texas in 1845, leading to war in which it conquered half of Mexico. It purchased Alaska from Russia in 1867. During the early territorial expansion, significant disputes between the agrarian slave-holding South and free-soil industrial North led to the American Civil War. The North's victory reestablished the Union, and led to the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, ending legalized slavery in the United States. The Plains Indian Wars relocated remaining tribes onto confined reservations, a Congressional Resolution annexed the Republic of Hawaii, then the treaty ending the Spanish-American Warceded Puerto Rico and Guam. By the end of the nineteenth century, its national economy was the world's largest.[8] The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the country's status as a global military power. The United States emerged from World War II as the first country with nuclear weapons and a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union left the United States as the sole superpower. TheU.S. economy is the world's largest national economy, with an estimated 2011 GDP of $15.1 trillion (22% of nominal global GDPand over 19% of global GDP at purchasing-power parity).[3][9] Per capita income is the world's sixth-highest.[3] The country accounts for 41% of global military spending,[10] and is a leading economic, political, and cultural force in the world.[11] Etymology In 1507, German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a world map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere "America" after Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci.[12] The first documentary evidence of the phrase "United States of America" was in an anonymously written essay published in theVirginia Gazette newspaper in Williamsburg, Virginia on April 6, 1776.[13][14] In June 1776, Thomas Jefferson included the phrase "UNITED STATES OF AMERICA" in all capitalized letters in the headline of his “original Rough draught” of the Declaration of Independence.[15][16] In the final Fourth of July version of the Declaration, the pertinent section of the title was changed to read, "The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America".[17] On November 15, 1777, the Second Continental Congress adopted the Articles of Confederation, which states, "The Stile of this Confederacy shall be 'The United States of America'." The Franco-American treaties of 1778 used "United States of North America", but from July 11, 1778, "United States of America" was used on the country's bills of exchange, and it has been the official name ever since.[18] The short form "United States" is also standard. Other common forms include the "U.S.", the "USA", and "America". Colloquial names include the "U.S. of A." and, internationally, the "States". "Columbia", a name popular in poetry and songs of the late 1700s,[19] derives its origin from Christopher Columbus; it appears in the name "District of Columbia". The standard way to refer to a citizen of the United States is as an "American". Although "United States" is the official appositional term, "American" and "U.S." are more commonly used to refer to the country adjectivally ("American values", "U.S. forces"). "American" is rarely used in English to refer to subjects not connected with the United States.[20] The phrase "United States" was originally treated as plural—e.g., "the United States are"—including in the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratified in 1865. It became common to treat it as singular—e.g., "the United States is"—after the end of the Civil War. The singular form is now standard; the plural form is retained in the idiom History Main article: History of the United States Native American and European settlement The indigenous peoples of the U.S. mainland, including Alaska Natives, are believed to have migrated from Asia, beginning between 40,000 and 12,000 years ago.[22] Some, such as the pre-Columbian Mississippian culture, developed advanced agriculture, grand architecture, and state-level societies. After Europeans began settling the Americas, many millions of indigenous Americans died from epidemics of imported diseases such as smallpox.[23] The whole of what is today described as the "U.S. mainland" was once the land of the indigenous peoples. In 1674, the Dutch ceded their American territory to England; the province of New Netherland was renamed New York.[30] Many new immigrants, especially to the South, were indentured servants—some two-thirds of all Virginia immigrants between 1630 and 1680.[31] By the turn of the 18th century, African slaves were becoming the primary source of bonded labor in many regions.[32] With the 1729 division of the Carolinas and the 1732 colonization of Georgia, the thirteen British colonies that would become the United States of America were established.[33] All had local governments with elections open to most free men, with a growing devotion to the ancient rights of Englishmen and a sense of self-government stimulating support for republicanism. All legalized the African slave trade.[34] With high birth rates, low death rates, and steady immigration, the colonial population grew rapidly. The Christian revivalist movement of the 1730s and 1740s known as the Great Awakening fueled interest in both religion and religious liberty. In the French and Indian War, British forces seized Canada from the French, but thefrancophone population remained politically isolated from the southern colonies. Excluding the Native Americans, who were being displaced, those thirteen colonies had a population of 2.6 million in 1770, about one-third that of Britain; nearly one in five Americans were black slaves.[35] Though subject to British taxation, the American colonials had no representation in the Parliament of Great Britain.In 1492 while under contract to Spanish crown, Christopher Columbus discovered several Caribbean islands and made first contact with the indigenous people.[24] On April 2, 1513, Spanish conquistador Juan Ponce de León landed on what he called "La Florida" - the first documented European arrival on what would become the U.S. mainland.[25] Spanish settlements in the region were followed by ones in the present-day southwestern United States. French fur traders established outposts of New France around the Great Lakes; France eventually claimed much of the North American interior, down to the Gulf of Mexico.[26] The first successful English settlements were theVirginia Colony in Jamestown in 1607 and the Pilgrims' Plymouth Colony in 1620.[27] The 1628 chartering of the Massachusetts Bay Colony resulted in a wave of migration; by 1634, New England had been settled by some 10,000 Puritans. Between the late 1610s and the American Revolution, about 50,000 convicts were shipped to Britain's American colonies.[28] Beginning in 1614, the Dutch settled along the lower Hudson River, including New Amsterdam on Manhattan Island.[29] Independence and expansion After the British defeat by American forces assisted by the French and Spanish, Great Britain recognized the independence of the United States and the states' sovereignty over American territory west to the Mississippi River.[39] Those wishing to establish a strong federal government with powers of taxation organized a constitutional convention in 1787.[40] The United States Constitution was ratified in 1788, and the new republic's first Senate, House of Representatives, and president—George Washington—took office in 1789.[41] The Bill of Rights, forbidding federal restriction of personal freedoms and guaranteeing a range of legal protections, was adopted in 1791.[41]Tensions between American colonials and the British during the revolutionary period of the 1760s and early 1770s led to the American Revolutionary War, fought from 1775 to 1781.[36] On June 14, 1775, the Continental Congress, convening in Philadelphia, established aContinental Army under the command of George Washington.[37] Proclaiming that "all men are created equal" and endowed with "certainunalienable Rights", the Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence, drafted largely by Thomas Jefferson, on July 4, 1776. That date is now celebrated annually as America's Independence Day. In 1777, the Articles of Confederation established a weak confederalgovernment that operated until 1789.[38] Attitudes toward slavery were shifting; a clause in the Constitution protected the Atlantic slave trade only until 1808.[42] The Northern states abolished slavery between 1780 and 1804, leaving the slave states of the South as defenders of the "peculiar institution".[43] The Second Great Awakening, beginning about 1800, made evangelicalism a force behind various social reform movements, including abolitionism.[44] Civil War and industrialization Americans' eagerness to expand westward prompted a long series of Indian Wars.[45] The Louisiana Purchase of French-claimed territory under President Thomas Jefferson in 1803 almost doubled the nation's size.[46] The War of 1812, declared against Britain over various grievances and fought to a draw, strengthened U.S. nationalism.[47] A series of U.S. military incursions into Florida led Spain to cede it and other Gulf Coast territory in 1819.[48] The Trail of Tears in the 1830s exemplified the Indian removal policy that stripped the native peoples of their land. The United States annexed the Republic of Texas in 1845, amid a period when the concept of Manifest Destiny was becoming popular.[49] The 1846 Oregon Treaty with Britain led to U.S. control of the present-day American Northwest.[50] The U.S. victory in the Mexican-American War resulted in the 1848 cession of California and much of the present-day American Southwest.[51] TheCalifornia Gold Rush of 1848–49 further spurred western migration.[52] New railways made relocation easier for settlers and increased conflicts with Native Americans.[53] Over a half-century, up to 40 million American bison, or buffalo, were slaughtered for skins and meat and to ease the railways' spread.[54] The loss of the buffalo, a primary resource for the plains Indians, was an existential blow to many native cultures.[54] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ellis_island_1902.jpgTensions between slave and free states mounted with arguments about the relationship between the state and federal governments, as well as violent conflicts over the spread of slavery into new states.[55] Abraham Lincoln, candidate of the largely antislavery Republican Party, was elected president in 1860.[56] Before he took office, seven slave states declared their secession—which the federal government maintained was illegal—and formed the Confederate States of America.[57] With the Confederate attack upon Fort Sumter, the Civil War began and four more slave states joined the Confederacy.[57] Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 declared slaves in the Confederacy to be free. Following the Union victory in 1865, three amendments to the U.S. Constitution ensured freedom for the nearly four million African Americans who had been slaves,[58] made them citizens, and gave them voting rights. The war and its resolution led to a substantial increase in federal power.[59] The war remains the deadliest conflict in American history, resulting in the deaths of 620,000 soldiers.[60] World War I, Great Depression, and World War II After the war, the assassination of Abraham Lincoln radicalized Republican Reconstructionpolicies aimed at reintegrating and rebuilding the Southern states while ensuring the rights of the newly freed slaves.[61] The resolution of the disputed 1876 presidential election by the Compromise of 1877 ended Reconstruction;Jim Crow laws soon disenfranchised many African Americans.[61] In the North, urbanization and an unprecedented influx of immigrantsfrom Southern and Eastern Europe hastened the country's industrialization. The wave of immigration, lasting until 1929, provided labor and transformed American culture.[62] National infrastructure development spurred economic growth. The 1867 Alaska Purchase from Russia completed the country's mainland expansion. The Wounded Knee Massacre in 1890 was the last major armed conflict of the Indian Wars. In 1893, the indigenous monarchy of the Pacific Kingdom of Hawaii was overthrown in a coup led by American residents; the United States annexed the archipelago in 1898. Victory in the Spanish–American War the same year demonstrated that the United States was a world power and led to the annexation of Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines.[63] The Philippines gained independence a half-century later; Puerto Rico and Guam remain U.S. territories. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Into_the_Jaws_of_Death_23-0455M_edit.jpgAt the outbreak of World War I in 1914, the United States remained neutral. Most Americans sympathized with the British and French, although many opposed intervention.[64] In 1917, the United States joined the Allies, and the American Expeditionary Forces helped to turn the tide against the Central Powers. After the war, the Senate did not ratify the Treaty of Versailles, which established the League of Nations. The country pursued a policy of unilateralism, verging on isolationism.[65] In 1920, the women's rights movement won passage of a constitutional amendment granting women's suffrage. The prosperity of the Roaring Twenties ended with the Wall Street Crash of 1929that triggered the Great Depression. After his election as president in 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt responded with the New Deal, a range of policies increasing government intervention in the economy, including the establishment of the Social Security system.[66] The Dust Bowl of the mid-1930s impoverished many farming communities and spurred a new wave of western migration. Cold War and protest politics The United States, effectively neutral during World War II's early stages after Nazi Germany'sinvasion of Poland in September 1939, began supplying materiel to the Allies in March 1941 through the Lend-Lease program. On December 7, 1941, the Empire of Japan launched a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, prompting the United States to join the Allies against theAxis powers as well as the internment of Japanese Americans by the thousands.[67] Participation in the war spurred capital investment and industrial capacity. Among the major combatants, the United States was the only nation to become richer—indeed, far richer—instead of poorer because of the war.[68] Allied conferences at Bretton Woods and Yalta outlined a new system of international organizations that placed the United States and Soviet Union at the center of world affairs. As victory was won in Europe, a 1945international conference held in San Francisco produced the United Nations Charter, which became active after the war.[69] The United States, having developed the first nuclear weapons, used them on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August. Japan surrendered on September 2, ending the war.[70] The 1961 Soviet launch of the first manned spaceflight prompted President John F. Kennedy's call for the United States to be first to land "a man on the moon", achieved in 1969. Kennedy also faced a tense nuclear showdown with Soviet forces in Cuba. Meanwhile, the United States experienced sustained economic expansion. A growing civil rights movement, symbolized and led by African Americans such as Rosa Parks andMartin Luther King, Jr., used nonviolence to confront segregation and discrimination. Following Kennedy's assassination in 1963, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965 were passed under President Lyndon B. Johnson.[71][72] He also signed into law the Medicare andMedicaid programs.[73] Johnson and his successor, Richard Nixon, expanded a proxy war in Southeast Asia into the unsuccessful Vietnam War. A widespread countercultural movement grew, fueled by opposition to the war, black nationalism, and the sexual revolution. Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, and others led a new wave of feminism that sought political, social, and economic equality for women.The United States and the Soviet Union jockeyed for power after World War II during the Cold War, dominating the military affairs of Europe through NATO and the Warsaw Pact, respectively. While they engaged in proxy wars and developed powerful nuclear arsenals, the two countries avoided direct military conflict. The U.S. often opposed Third World left-wing movements that it viewed as Soviet-sponsored. American troops fought Communist Chinese and North Korean forces in the Korean War of 1950–53. The House Un-American Activities Committee pursued a series of investigations into suspected leftist subversion, while Senator Joseph McCarthy became the figurehead of anticommunist sentiment. As a result of the Watergate scandal, in 1974 Nixon became the first U.S. president to resign, to avoid being impeached on charges including obstruction of justice and abuse of power. The Jimmy Carter administration of the late 1970s was marked by stagflation and the Iran hostage crisis. The election of Ronald Reagan as president in 1980 heralded arightward shift in American politics, reflected in major changes in taxation and spending priorities. His second term in office brought both the Iran-Contra scandal and significantdiplomatic progress with the Soviet Union. The subsequent Soviet collapse ended the Cold War. Contemporary era On September 11, 2001, al-Qaeda terrorists struck the World Trade Center in New York City and The Pentagon near Washington, D.C., killing nearly three thousand people. In response, the Bush administration launched the global War on Terror, invading Afghanistan and removing the Taliban government and al-Qaeda training camps. Taliban insurgents continue to fight a guerrilla war. In 2002, the Bush administration began to press for regime change in Iraq on controversial grounds.[75] Forces led by the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, oustingSaddam Hussein. In 2005, Hurricane Katrina caused severe destruction along much of the Gulf Coast, devastating New Orleans. In 2008, amid a global economic recession, the first African American president, Barack Obama, was elected. Major health care and financial system reforms were enacted two years later. In 2011, a raid by Navy SEALs in Pakistan killed al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. TheIraq War officially ended with the pullout of the remaining U.S. troops from the country in December 2011.Under President George H. W. Bush, the United States took a lead role in the UN–sanctioned Gulf War. The longest economic expansion in modern U.S. history—from March 1991 to March 2001—encompassed the Bill Clinton administration and the dot-com bubble.[74] A civil lawsuit and sex scandal led to Clinton's impeachment in 1998, but he remained in office. The 2000 presidential election, one of the closest in American history, was resolved by a U.S. Supreme Court decision—George W. Bush, son of George H. W. Bush, became president.